While a historian stands firmly planted in the present and looks back into the past, a historical novelist has a more immediate task: to set readers in the midst of bygone events and lead them forward, allowing them to live and feel the wonderment, fear, hope, triumph, and pain as if they were there.

Learning historical stories is easy, creating stories based in history is not.

In Once Upon a Time It Was Now, best-selling author James Alexander Thom (Follow the River, From Sea to Shining Sea, Sign-Talker) gives you the tools you need to research and create stories born from the past that will move and inspire modern readers.

Grouping Information

once upon a time it was now the art and craft of writing historical fiction

Grouping Author

thom james alexander

Grouping Category

book

Last Grouping Update

2019-02-22 04:48:41AM

Last Indexed

2019-02-22 04:52:15AM

Solr Details

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0

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author

Thom, James Alexander,

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Thom, James Alexander

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Adult Nonfiction

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Central Adult Nonfiction

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Historical fiction writers and historians are not the same. While a historian stands firmly planted in the present and looks back into the past, a historical novelist sets readers directly in the past and shows them forward. The job of a historical fiction writer is to make readers feel the victories and defeats, joys and pains, as if they were there. James Alexander Thom guides aspiring writers through the creation of historical fiction. He includes tips on problems many writers face, including: how much credibility is too much?; telling facts from opinions and seeing through the bias; knowing when to embellish and when not to; researching with archives, genealogy, site visits, journals, and memories. Highlighted with humor and personal anecdotes, Thom's detailed guides uses invaluable insights from himself and other historians and historical novelists to help the reader create a novel that is true to what was then, when then was now.